Since most of the US bloggers and affiliates are taking easy today, enjoin their roasted turkeys and preparing for tomorrow’s and Monday’s sale marathons, I have decided to take it easy as well. So today I was doing some vanity search and to my amazement Google is listing me #5 for my name.

Before experimenting with Googlebot, I was occupying 12th position for the term. It is true that my article on how I am planing to beat the “other Vlad” have generated few important links, however I do not believe they were sufficient enough to jump my website to #5 position, especially competing against Wikipedia.

So what happened? I think my entire experiment has caused some what of a confusion on Google’s data centers. But it is only my guess.

I do not know how long this phenomena will last, but it appears that my experiment, although it is over, continues to affect my blog. Not only I have improved position for my name search, I have dramatically improved on some other very competitive keywords in my niche, and I am observing increase in Google’s traffic. The question is how long will this last?

Happy Thanksgiving!

As a former real estate agent I found the clip below extremely entertaining. I wonder if Vanessa Fox finds it funny as well? Or maybe there is a reason that she left Google for Zillow?

If you are a real estate agent and are familiar with Zillow’s “zestimates” you may understand that a possible “Google Real Estate” is a perfect recipe for disaster. Anyway, here is the clip from Home Rental Blog:

Update: This experiment is over. Google is back crawling my website. Google wins.

One of the great benefits coming from as weird URL as you see for this blog, that I will have extremely hard time to ever sell it. With that there is also one particular advantage- I can experiment more with my website than other bloggers. Even if my experiments are a little drastic or insane.

Having been defamed by Google, along with many other bloggers, gave me an opportunity to reevaluate my relationship with big G. I have decided to see how will this blog survive on its own- without Google. So I have instructed Googlebot to stay way from this blog. But I also have requested to remove my entire website from Google’s index via Google Webmaster Tools (formerly know as Google Sitemaps).

Why so drastic?

Well, as I said it is an experiment. And I would advise not to follow my example if you run a blog that is responsible for good chunk of your earnings. Otherwise you are likely to loose about 30% of existing traffic and potentially that can translate into a loss of considerable amount of your income.

I would not call it an attempt to boycott Google. However, since Google has considered some of the pages to be shown on the first page of its search results, removing my website from these results is a way of returning the kindness after being defamed by their most recent Page Rank update.

Is it all about paid links and nofollow?

Yes and no. Yes I am guilty. My guilt amounts to about $2,000 earned from sponsored reviews and text link ads during the course of last year. Even I if I can’t substantiate a claim that I did not intentionally sell Page Rank, I still believe that a “no-nofollow” link to an advertiser from my blog did not have the same effect on SERPs as a “no-nofollow” link to an advertiser let say on TechChrunch or a “no-nofollow” link to his employer by Matt Cutts.

I still believe that paid reviews and paid links can contribute to better and more relevant results. To claim that links are irrelevant just because they are found in a sponsored review is absurd.

Could there have been a more moderate way out?

In order to make peace with Google, many webmasters were forced into waving white flags in surrender. I believe that similar option was available to me also. However seeing how uneven and unjust penalties were distributed, I have decided to give Google a hand. Even though I received money in exchange for links, my conscious is clean. When my website will be removed from Google’s index, any claim that I am selling Page Rank is absurd.

On the other had this will give me a better understanding whether or not a website can be successful or even survive without being indexed in Google. I will be posting some statistics in the future on it so stay tuned.

Although the readership of this blog is low, the fact that people subscribe to my blog tells me that once in a while I manage to write something relevant and interesting and no search engine will tell me otherwise.

Here is just few predictions about the effects this will have on my blog:

1. I will lose about 30% of traffic- not a big deal if I manage to increase the subscribers to this blog.
2. I predict a considerable decrease of spam (both human and automated) on my blog. It will be interesting to see to what degree was Google at fault when it came to spam.
3. I imagine bloggers may hesitate to link to me since there will be no sign of my website in Google- this will result in a smaller number of links in the future to my blog. Will this turn my blog into a “bad neighborhood”? Frankly in this light the entire idea of “bad neighborhood” is absurd- without Google it does not exist.
4. I may loose my place in the “Dofollow Movement” even though I am keeping DoFollow plugin on my blog.

I know that many of you disagree with my approach, I do however want to hear your take on it. How do you think my blog will do?

My wife and I are going on a trip to North Carolina tomorrow- of course this will result in things being quiet around here. Before I take this vacation I wanted to post something here on the subject that shook (and shocked) many bloggers the Google PR Update. I am not sure if I am as excited about PR as I used to be, but since I am still writing about it, it must be important.

As most of you, I was wondering about a pattern of what took place. It is only one’s guess why and how penalties were implemented.

So to lighted up the situation I decided to find some fun practices which will keep your Page Rank untouched. Hopefully you can ad your own fun way to please the big G:

1. Link to pornographic websites as much as you can.
2. Kiss up to Google and never tell them they are stupid.
3. If you sell links or write paid reviews make sure to report and snitch on your fellow webmasters who do the same.
4. Yours next…….

Please share some fun ways to keep your websites PR high and untouched. I hope we can come up with a list of at least 10 best practices to do so. Help me out!

If you think I am going at it again bashing WidgetBucks- I am not. In fact I am experiencing the change of heart. And of course I would like to apologize to some bloggers for overly criticizing them for getting involved with WidgetBucks.

I am not putting the widget on my website, but there are signs that WidgetBucks may address the areas of TOS that I had the biggest issues with.

Just to underline again, the biggest problem that I have with WidgetBucks is the hidden html link, which can not be removed from the widget according to TOS. Quick fix would be to allow publishers removing/nofollowing the link if they wish, and make the link clearly visible in the widget.

I have no problem at all with the fact that they have changed terms and referral structure just hours after the products launch. Working with Commission Junction merchants I receive at least one notice each day that some merchant decided to change the terms, so I can live with that.